PSYCH 3400 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Plantar Reflex, Moro Reflex, Neural Development
Document Summary
Plasticity: changes in neural pathways and synapses due to changes in behaviors, environment, neural processes, thinking, emotions, and bodily injury. Experience expectant brain functions: certain basic common experiences for normal development. Experience dependent brain functions: particular variable experiences that may or may not develop in a particular infant. Pregnant rats on the space shuttle for about 50% of gestation. Pups delivered on earth and tested on days 1, 3, 5. Neurogenesis and neuron migration (during prenatal development and the first year after birth. Time of greatest plasticity: synapse generation and pruning (during early childhood) Overall, it is not just the damage, but the timing. At 6 years of age, children with congenital brain damage scored the same as normal children. However, the children with brain damage failed to improve and fell progressively farther behind the normal children, so that by adolescence there were large differences between the two groups.
